世論 What Japan Thinks

Two silly rankings for the price of one today! This time goo Ranking looked at what people think they’ll have to give up once they marry, for both men and women.

Demographics

Over the 21st and 22nd of March 2008 1,036 people from the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.7% were male, 7.0% in their teens, 14.7% in their twenties, 30.1% in their thirties, 27.0% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 10.2% aged sixty or over. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample. Only the single people were asked today’s questions.

For me, I realised that I’d have to give motorbike riding, not that that was much of a hardship in Japan as for three months it’s too cold and for four it’s far too hot to ride, and living around Osaka it’s a long ride before you get to much in the way of interesting terrain. Just about everything else I had to give up was a good thing, from beer to regular delivery pizza.

Number 5 for women is a telling one, as are the two 15s for men…

What will you or did you regret giving up for marriage?
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There seems to have been a definite theme running through the goo Rankings I’ve been publishing over the recent weeks, but let me assure you anything you may read into this is purely your own imagination! This time let’s look at what people feel worried about when they get married, the marriage blues in other words, with detailed ranking for both men and women.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 24th of December 2007 1,094 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private online questionnaire. 45.6% of the sample was male, 8.8% were in their teens, 15.6% in their twenties, 29.1% in their thirties, 26.8% in their forties, 10.7% in their fifties, and 9.0% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

A surprising result is that for whether work will understand, where it is men who are much more worried. This reflects two aspects of Japanese social structure; first, women are expected and often expect themself to quit either after marriage or once they have children (indeed, concerns about being a working mother was very low on the list of women’s worries), and second, salarymen are often expected to work (or drink) until the last train home, so new grooms are concerned about how they are going to be able to excuse themselves from their responsibilities.

For me it was probably a combination of a change in lifestyle (no longer being able to just lie in bed until noon, not bother shaving, then order pizza for dinner), a lack of private time to wander around the shops, and no spare money to spend on bits and pieces for my computer. However, these are of course outweighed by the benefits.
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In one of these strange and totally unscientific surveys that goo Rankings rather often conducts, we find out who the Japanese consider to be a model international couple. That is “model” as in “role model”, not “fashion model”. There is no demographic or other information for this poll, except that it was conducted over three days towards the end of November.

I believe the gist of the original Japanese question is after which international couple’s example would they like to model their relationship. One wonders about the thought processes that went on in the selection of two other-kind-of-model brides.

You may also note that all bar one seems to be a marriage with a white foreigner.

UPDATE: Following feedback from Roy, I’ve promoted (demoted?) Kumiko Goto to just “model”.
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

The answer to headline is “not very much, quite frankly. And just 17 times a year.”

The Japanese division of the drug company Bayer recently published the results of a survey into Japanese married couples’ bedroom life. They interviewed 103 men and 103 women, all currently married, from each decade of life from their thirties to their sixties, excepting men in their forties, where they only had 102 people, making 823 people in total. The fieldwork was conducted between the 9th and 12th of June this year, by means of an internet questionnaire. No information is available on how the respondents were chosen.

Surprisingly, I feel, almost a third in some degree of a sexless marriage felt that sex was just too much of pain in the bum (figuratively, not literally!), much higher than the percentage who thought love had faded on either or both sides of the relationship.

Note also in Q12 and Q13 the difference between how people with experience of ED reacted versus the good intentions of those who had not.
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

The answer to headline is “not very much, quite frankly. And just 17 times a year.”

The Japanese division of the drug company Bayer recently published the results of a survey into Japanese married couples’ bedroom life. They interviewed 103 men and 103 women, all currently married, from each decade of life from their thirties to their sixties, excepting men in their forties, where they only had 102 people, making 823 people in total. The fieldwork was conducted between the 9th and 12th of June this year, by means of an internet questionnaire. No information is available on how the respondents were chosen.

In the second part we look at the degree of satisfaction in marriages; total sexlessness seems to be bad for a relationship, but even those with a somewhat sexless marriage seem to be reasonably satisfied overall. As one might expect, those most active in the bedroom seem to be the happiest.

Unfortunately, in Q8 the print on the graph is far too small and I cannot read it all; if anyone can help out, please leave me a short message.
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

The answer to headline is “not very much, quite frankly. And just 17 times a year.”

The Japanese division of the drug company Bayer recently published the results of a survey into Japanese married couples’ bedroom life. They interviewed 103 men and 103 women, all currently married, from each decade of life from their thirties to their sixties, excepting men in their forties, where they only had 102 people, making 823 people in total. The fieldwork was conducted between the 9th and 12th of June this year, by means of an internet questionnaire. No information is available on how the respondents were chosen.

The main reason for this research is, of course, that Bayer is famous for Viagra (oops, hope that doesn’t trip your spam filters), so it wanted to highlight issues surrounding the condition known in Japanese by the initials of the English term, ED (I’ll let you work that one out yourself!), probably because it’s less of a mouthful than the Japanese term 勃起機能の低下, bokki kinou no teika. My dictionary suggests 勃起障害, bokki shougai, is the official term, but perhaps that second term sounds too negative - “malfunction” rather than just “reduced functionality” in the first case. Note that for reasons I’m not too sure of, a lot of the terminology is English loanwords, even when Japanese equivalents exist; for example, ED as noted above, then セックス and セックスレス (sekkusu and sekkusuresu, sex and sexless, to name but three.

As per usual for any bedroom-related surveys, no, I will not tell you where I stand (as it were), but instead relate a wee anecdote. The first time my mother-in-law came to visit our flat shortly after marriage, and as wifey showed her the bedroom, complete with double bed, of course, the mother-in-law asked where I slept.

A tip of the hat to Mari’s Diary to alerting me to this survey! No, I don’t know what the penguins are for either!
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Following up on my recent report into Japanese demographics, in particular the lack of children, here is the results of a survey from the Meiji Yasuda Institute of Life and Wellness, Inc on the views of young Japanese (between the ages of 20 and 39) on marriage, birth and divorce. In February of this year they surveyed 759 people (I think it was by face-to-face interviews, but it is not clear from the survey) from the Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa areas (basically the capital city and surrounding prefectures). As the detailed demographics are important to this survey, I’ll present them within the main text.

In the final part we look at how people meet; for me, I’d definitely be in the “Other” category, as the tale of how I met my wife is perhaps not an unusual method for foreigners (no, I wasn’t her English teacher!), but the circumstances surrounding it were quite interesting. Basically, the timing was perfect for both of us, but if any one thing had happened differently we may never have lasted more than one or two dates; even an earthquake in Portland played a part…
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Following up on my recent report into Japanese demographics, in particular the lack of children, here is the results of a survey from the Meiji Yasuda Institute of Life and Wellness, Inc on the views of young Japanese (between the ages of 20 and 39) on marriage, birth and divorce. In February of this year they surveyed 759 people (I think it was by face-to-face interviews, but it is not clear from the survey) from the Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa areas (basically the capital city and surrounding prefectures). As the detailed demographics are important to this survey, I’ll present them within the main text.

This portion of the survey deals in part with middle-age divorce. This is the phenomenon whereby round about retirement, usually, marriages just break up because of many factors, including the husband now being nothing without work, or the wife no longer having peace and quiet now he’s home all day. This statistic may increase in a couple of years time as there is a change in the law coming through that will allow divorced women to get at their share of the ex-husband’s pension more easily.
Read the rest of this entry »

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Following up on my recent report into Japanese demographics, in particular the lack of children, here is the results of a survey from the Meiji Yasuda Institute of Life and Wellness, Inc on the views of young Japanese (between the ages of 20 and 39) on marriage, birth and divorce. In February of this year they surveyed 759 people (I think it was by face-to-face interviews, but it is not clear from the survey) from the Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa areas (basically the capital city and surrounding prefectures). As the detailed demographics are important to this survey, I’ll present them within the main text.

This is quite the longest survey I’ve translated for a while, but it is a fascinating set of figures. The sample size is perhaps slightly small, but the processing of the data seems to have been very detailed, so I would place a high degree of trust on these statistics.
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Trivia no Izumi (Fount/Spring of Trivia) outdid itself tonight, with a survey to find out when people who had been married for three years first heard their wife pass gas! They interviewed 1000 Japanese husbands by means of an internet poll, and as you can see in the pie chart on the right, almost half the wives (43%) couldn’t keep it in for more than a year. 29% first let rip in the second year, 16% avoided a bottom burp until their third year, and 12% of husbands have been spared their wives’ anal emissions.

For good measure, this segment of the show also had face-to-face interviews with some of the husbands describing the how and where of their wives’ flatulance, accompanied by their wedding photos, leaving their neighbours in no doubt who they were talking about!

To finish up this item of trivia, they persuaded one of the wives who had never passed gas in front of her husband to try to do it, so their hidden cameras could capture this moment for posterior-ity…

Oh, and I certainly will not tell you what category my wife falls into!